The market came alive before dawn, its concrete floor still damp from the night's cleaning. I followed the sound of chopping—sharp, rhythmic—to a narrow stall where an elderly woman was quartering limes with a cleaver that looked older than me. She worked without looking, her hands certain in the half-light, while steam rose from the pot beside her.
"You're early," she said in slow English, not a question. I nodded. She ladled something into a bowl, slid it across the counter with a lime wedge balanced on top. The broth was the color of amber, flecked with green herbs I couldn't name. It tasted like rain and earth and something faintly sweet, like the memory of fruit. I finished it standing there, the bowl warm against my palms.
By the time the sun cleared the rooftops, the market had transformed into a maze of color and noise. Vendors called out prices in a language that moved too fast for me to catch. A young man sold fish still twitching in plastic bins. A girl arranged mangoes in perfect pyramids, adjusting them when anyone's shadow fell across her display. I bought a bag of something that looked like lychees but tasted sharper, almost floral.
I found myself following a woman carrying a tower of baskets on her head, fascinated by how she moved through the crowd without breaking stride. She led me, unknowingly, to the far edge of the market where the permanent stalls gave way to blankets spread on the ground. Here, people sold things from their own gardens—bundles of herbs, eggs nested in straw, vegetables still wearing the soil they'd grown in.
An old man with hands like tree roots was selling beetles. Live ones, in woven cages no bigger than a fist. He saw me staring and held one up, making it sing—a high, thin whistle that cut through the market noise. I watched children gather around him, their faces bright with want.
I thought about the airport, waiting somewhere across the city with its air conditioning and international departures. I thought about the guidebook in my bag that had never mentioned this market, this woman with her lime-stained hands, this beetle song. The things worth finding are never on the map. They're always in the margins, in the moments before sunrise, in the places you stumble into when you're lost enough to pay attention.
By noon, the market would be closing. Vendors would pack their unsold goods, sweep their spaces clean, disappear until tomorrow's dawn. But for now, in this temporary city of need and exchange, I was just another body moving through, tasting broth I couldn't pronounce, learning the weight of belonging nowhere except exactly here.
#travel #wanderlust #markets #authentic